Prophets With Enchantment: Framing Christian Climate Activism

This paper argues for a re-enchantment of studies of contemporary climate change activism. It focuses upon Christian climate activists in the UK and how they are reinterpreting their theological beliefs in ways that mobilise religious communities. We employ a social movement framing perspective to discover the nature of this 'interpretative work' using data from a survey (n = 319) and in-depth interviews (n = 62) with Anglicans and Catholics in three church dioceses, a Christian aid agency, and two Christian social movement groups. We found that familiar 'stewardship' framings of Christian climate activism dominated in institutional contexts but gave way to 'prophetic' framings in Christian social movements. Prophetic framings of climate activism have received very little attention compared with stewardship, but they provide strong theological justification and a distinct emotional inflection to Christian participation in climate protest, and form a bridge to groups like Extinction Rebellion. Prophetic framings were, however, open to prognostic disputes, and remained within an anthropocentric discourse on climate change. With Christians comprising about one third of the world's population, it is of global significance to the environmental movement that in certain enclaves and across denominations, Christian beliefs are being reinterpreted in ways that can lead to their mobilisation not just as 'climate stewards' caring for creation, but as 'climate prophets' engaged in political protest.